Mother's Day is soon here in the UK. Trying to be organised, I ordered my Mum's pressie of perfume last week, and it arrived on Saturday. There are two. One from me, and one from Gorgeous Girl.
Yesterday I wanted to wrap them up, so it was all done. As usual, I used pastel tissue paper, and tied with ribbon.
To add a bit of pretty, I glued on a couple of my [Flat Roses]. A top tip for attaching anything to tissue paper is to use a 'dry' glue rather than a wet one like PVA. Using a drier one like glue from a hot glue gun means the tissue paper won't bleed, and it dries in seconds so it won't soak through to the gift beneath the paper.
I was going to leave it at that, but then I opened a drawer and found some of the little cut out shapes that I'd covered with glitter. They had been destined for another garland last Christmas, but I didn't get round to making it. The shapes have sat in their glittery glory, forgotten in the drawer. An idea flashed into my head, and I took a glitter 'M' for 'mother' and glued on to the flat rose.
Then I glittered a letter 'N' for 'Nan', and glued on to the remaining flat rose.
I have to admit that I really like this idea, and plan to do it again at Christmas. It's quick and easy to do, and as long as everyone has a different initial, it makes sorting them out very simple. 
Now I need to buy pastel coloured glitter so I can cover a collection of letters to keep for just this purpose. More flat roses need to be made too. I've added a list of sites for Mother's Day inspiration - if you should need it - at the bottom of this post.
Even though it's still chilly, and more often than not, cloud covers the sun, it does feel springlike here now. These hyacinths and muscari came out of the front garden.
You may have read a post I wrote last month, where the husband had turned the little garden next to the playhouse into a raised garden. (You can read the post here if you wish :Preparing the land) I mentioned that he'd speared the little garden with bamboo canes to try and stop the neighbouring cats from using it as a litter tray. Well, it failed. Every time I looked, I could see a nasty little poo pile and it made me feel so angry.
Our cat Dudley is an indoor cat, so it isn't him using the soon-to-be-vegetable-patch as a toilet.
On Sunday the husband decided to remove all of the offending poo, dig the garden and add in fresh soil, then to protect the fresh as a daisy soil from the Little Rotters, he covered it with chicken wire. Ha! Take that, cats!
Unless they come armed with wire cutters, there will be no cat poo in there now! (The windmills are an obsession of the Little Lady) I think we'll keep it on there for as long as possible, even when we put baby plants in there. After that we'll have to come up with another plan. I just don't want cat poo around our lettuces and tomatoes! Urgh.
Gorgeous Girl and I have started off a few seeds. We still have more to do, but to give us a helping hand, we've bought a few plant babies that can go in this coming weekend.
Sites for Mother's Day inspiration:
[dotty brown]
[the real flower company]
[bliss & bloom]
[not on the high street]
[charbonnel et walker]
[le maison bleue]
[the perfume shop]